


Like A River Flows Surely To The Sea

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Blood Of The King [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Final Fantasy XV: Vanilla Version, First Meetings, Gen, Pining, Tenebrae (Final Fantasy XV), Tenebrae Culture, accidentally falling in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 23:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19029919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: The greatest plans of mice and men oft go awry, and there is no exception for him. Especially for him.





	Like A River Flows Surely To The Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lindwyrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindwyrm/gifts), [BlackJacketsandPens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/gifts).



> Dedicated to two very patient people who waited and waited for me to finish this.
> 
> This was mostly written before Royal Addition was released, and before the second arc of DLC was announced. As a result it is not compliant with them, and so I'll pick and choose what Canon remains for _Consort In Red_ and _Blood Of The King_ respectively.

The first time he hears about her, on the radio, is the announcement of her taking up the Trident of the Oracle. Young Sylva Fleuret, a precarious seventeen years of age-- so, _so_ young, but a grown woman just the same. It’s a _radio,_ of course, so he doesn’t see her, but he hears her public speech before a crowd in Fenestala. He has no way of imagining what she looks like, as a person, but he closes golden eyes and imagines anyway: a sylleblossom, sprouted and stretched toward the sun, just beginning to unfurl its petals.  

The image brings him a great deal of comfort, though he isn’t sure why.

 

A few months later, on the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, the announcement of her first pilgrimage comes on the air.

She’s touring Tenebrae.

He makes plans to be in literally _any other country_ ; an Oracle’s first tour is precious, and not something a man like him should be in attendance of.

 

It doesn’t _actually_ tell him why he finds himself, a few weeks later in Pagla Station, armed with a razor and a pair of scissors, lopping off long locks of hair and frustrating scruff in the settlement’s shower car.

A shower had removed years, literal decades, water taking with it stains of blood, dirt and starscourge. The lack of beard makes him look ages younger as well; it’s been a long time since he’s been smooth-faced, and it looks like that act alone has removed ten years from his mien. Lengths of wine fall away, leaving heart and head both lighter for it.

When he looks in the mirror, a much younger man stares back at him, alive and utterly human.

 

It’s a simple curiosity, he tells himself. He wants to see how sylleblossoms fair in tainted soil. That’s all.

That’s _all._

 

Telling himself that manages to keep him both at Pagla Station and calm until about three hours before her train arrives. He knows, because the station manager tells him so when he insists he absolutely must continue his journey. People have come from all around to meet her at the station, and what few trains _were_ leaving were doing so with significantly less people on them than they had brought in. Pagla was quickly becoming a [ demophobes ](http://www.fearof.net/fear-of-crowds-phobia-enochlophobia/) worst nightmare.

He had always preferred smaller gatherings, one, two dozen people at most. Crowds of the magnitude for which were coming to see Sylva…

“I know you must continue, sir, but I’m afraid you’ve missed the last train by an hour. The next one on schedule is the Oracle’s. I can get you on that one. Astrals know there will be plenty of room. Her schedule puts her here for three days.”

Three days. And he certainly shouldn’t be here for even a minute of it.

 

There is, realistically, no reason _not_ to meet the young Oracle. He’s here, and she will _be_ here in less than an hour, now. Even if he says nothing, if he does not greet her-- as long as he does not stand too near, perhaps, he will even pass unnoticed.

But the Fleuret are a good family; healers, the Oracles are, not warrior-kings, and no son or daughter of theirs has earned his ire. Even if they have to earn his respect, they’re owed the attempt.

It occurs to him, then, that he is absolutely crazy.

There are probably worse things to be.

 

He talks himself in and out of it over the course of the next forty minutes. Then the Oracle’s train arrives, with all the bells and whistles, and her escort of Tenebrae soldiers pushes back the crowd to let her disembark.

Her personal entourage consists of a bodyguard and governess, a couple of advisers following them. Considering she was Tenebrae’s Crown Princess, the security made sense, as did the layout of their arrangement; soldier’s in the front, swords sheathed, pistols holstered. Two bannermen, one holding the banner of the Oracle, the other the flag of Tenebrae. Lady Sylva and her immediate entourage are in white touched with Sylleblossom blue, while the soldier’s uniforms were an inversion, more blue with elegant flairs of white, arrayed out like the petals of the flower.

He remained where he was, pressed up against the cordon with his heart thudding in his chest. Lady Sylva swept her gaze over the assembled crowd in a manner he knew wasn't entirely from curiosity. But there wasn't any trepidation in her, not like he would have expected of a young princess facing her first full-scale engagement. She stood straight, shoulders squared, head unbowed; she looked right at the masses and did not flinch away.

Her attention did not linger on him. In plain garb from the station shop, he was simply another face in the crowd.

 

Consequently, he irrevocably finds himself lingering even as the sun passes far overhead and began to sink, giving birth to shadows which grow ever-longer.

He watches through the hours as the Oracle’s camp is set up, the princess apparently opting to leave the station cars to visitors as rugs are brought out, poles and cloth are erected and stretched, and finally a small tent village exists, though the first tent, the forward most tent, is nothing but four poles and semi-sheer cloth, with a single chair set underneath it.

That is where, for many of those hours the Oracle invites the ill to sit before her and she prays away their suffering.

 

He should not, under any circumstances, actually meet the young woman. That much, he is very well aware. He goes to hide in the sleeper car.

He doesn’t know how his traitorous feet glide him past Tenebrite soldiery instead. Draw him to the purple of her Ladyship’s tent, to the open cloth. Her governess is not present, but it seems an aid is, and she takes notice of his intrusion first, talking, but he doesn’t hear her.

“Your majesty,” he greets, and somehow his hat is in his hands. He has grown attached to it over the years, a little bit of cloth and wire. It is battered and rather badly abused. The careful washing he had given it in the station had done very little for it. He takes his hat off for no one, neither kings nor emperors, yet there it is.

He has no idea how it got there.

Princess Sylva is beautiful. She looks at him and sees only a man, and _oh,_ long has it been since that were a time, what he wouldn’t give for such things again.

 

“Hi,” he says, like an idiot.

 

She giggles, and all at once Ardyn knows that he is lost.

**Author's Note:**

> Like a river flows surely to the sea  
> Darling so it goes  
> Some things are meant to be  
> Take my hand, take my whole life too  
> For I can't help falling in love with you  
> \--Elvis Presley, _Can't Help Falling In Love_


End file.
